Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Have You Seen This Peaceful Religious Man?

A capital murder arrest warrant has been issued for a man suspected in the deaths of his teenage daughters, Irving police said.

Investigators were searching for Yaser Abdel Said, a 50-year-old cab driver, police said. The two teens were found in a Jet Taxi vehicle that Mr. Said drove, Irving police spokesman David Tull said. Jet Taxi operations manager Chris Petersen said he was unable to release any information but that the company was in contact with police.

About 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Irving police received a 911 call from a woman saying she had been shot, but could not provide a location. The call originated near O’Connor Road and Riverside Drive, and officers sent to the location were unable to find the victim.

An hour later, police received another call from someone reporting a suspicious vehicle in a parking lot in the 200 block of Las Colinas Boulevard, which is about a half-mile from where the victim called. Inside, police said they found Sarah Yaser Said, 17, and her sister Amina Yaser Said, 18, both of Lewisville. The two sisters had been shot.

Sisters, Amina, 18, and Sarah, 17, were each shot to death. Friends of the girls say their father was Egyptian and critical of popular American lifestyles. "I'm definitely 100% sure that it was her dad that killed her," said Kathleen Wong, a friend of the dead teenagers.

Wong says the girl's father was verbally abusive and that Sarah, especially, lived in fear. "She's always told me that she was always so scared of her dad," says Wong. "Even at school if a teacher joked around like, 'I'm gonna tell your parents about this', she would like totally flip out and start crying like, 'please don't tell'."